Google Deal Said to Bring U.S. Scrutiny — The Federal Trade Commission has opened a preliminary antitrust investigation into Google's planned $3.1 billion purchase of the online advertising company DoubleClick, an industry executive briefed on the agency's plans said yesterday.

Getting in the game at Microsoft — Robbie Bach's job is to make software giant's entertainment division profitable — For all the challenges Microsoft Corp. faces as it moves into the future, the Redmond, Wash., software giant remains a formidable money machine.

Particls Launches Advanced Alerts Platform — Today Particls, billed by many as an RSS feed manipulator/organizer, came out of invitation-only testing with a host of tools for users. Particls essentially serves as a proportioning alert filter that notifies the user via news ticker …

Leading the charge on iPhone — Brace yourself for another tsunami of hype. — May's craze was "American Idol." June's will be the Apple iPhone, which is going on sale in a few weeks. As with "Idol," the iPhone show has lots of Seattle connections. — The season begins Wednesday …

Beyond the Browser — At OSBC last week I gave a Radar talk on current technology trends. The trend of moving traditional desktop applications to massively networked, Web 2.0 online applications like Google Docs is well-known. The problem is, a web browser is a terribly limited platform …

Computer Glitch Tangles Japanese Flights — Hundreds of All Nippon Airways flights were cancelled or delayed Sunday because of computer error. — Hundreds of domestic flights in Japan were cancelled or delayed on Sunday as a result of a glitch in the computer system of All Nippon Airways Co. Ltd.

Will ISPs spoil the online video party? — With an ever greater amount of video being consumed online, many Internet users are in for a shock. There's a dirty little secret in the broadband industry: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) don't have the capacity to deliver the bandwidth that they claim to offer.

Meet WeFi — First Fon, then Whisher and now WeFi - the start-ups focused on sharing of Wi-Fi connections keep on coming. Of course, each one has their own twist. FON does this through their own hardware (or by partnering with carriers), Whisher is a software only play.

In Africa, Money not necessary for mobile banking — Necessity, they say is the mother of invention. It couldn't be more true in case of Africa, where pre-paid airtime is fast becoming the 'virtual' currency for Pan-African trade, overcoming conventional currency exchange and lack of banking infrastructure.

War Fears Turn to Cyberspace in Estonia — When Estonian authorities began removing a bronze statue of a World War II-era Soviet soldier from a park in this bustling Baltic seaport last month, they expected violent street protests by Estonians of Russian descent.

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